Trish, your colors and what you have planned for the house sound so beautiful. I can't wait to see it. HA! I'll be glad when I can go to bed at night and not be thinking about decorating, really. It's so tiring mentally. LOL I wish I had the "knack" but, don't so everything is struggle in my head to get it "right." Right now I'm picking my brain apart on how I want the master bath to look. I've had a mental picture of the master bedroom in my head ever since I saw the model KB home on Martha Stewart's show one day. I never watch her, but was flipping channels and saw her talking about this model home so I stopped to hear more. She had a celeb decorator (one of the guys from Queer Eye) doing a tour and talking about the decor. When he arrived at one of the bedrooms, I fell in love. It was done in a country style with arts and craft wainscoting going 2/3 up the wall, in white and then the walls above were blue. The trim and ceiling were also white. I thought it was so cozy and have never gotten that picture out of my nead and I hate that. Do you get stuck on ideas and just can't shake them? So I know what the bedroom will look like, coutry/shabbychic, whatever.... I want to do the Master Bath in blue, but just a shade lighter. The vanities are already picked out and they are in a kind of distressed black with marble tops. We've decided on subway tile for the shower and wainscoting for the wall were there is no water. Where their is water we're thinking of using the same material (haven't decided yet) that we use on the whirlpool tub deck. I'm thinking a porcelain that looks like the marble on the vanities. The floor is also a question mark. I'm thinking of making it easy and just putting down black and white hex like I'll have in the guest bath, which by the way is already planned out with fabrics, fixtures, etc. purchased. Sorry, I get carried away. What was the original question?LOL

Okay, I had to chuckle over the "10'ceilings". Most people I know only have 10' ceilings. It's the newer builds that have these high cathedral ceilings. Just think of the money you'll save with heating and cooling because you won't have that extra space to take care of :) 10' isn't really all that short, unless you're like an 8' or 9' person... We live in a mobile home and have for the last 8 years and will until the time comes that I get out, go to the two year business school and get a job (I've been a SAHM for 9 years tomorrow, exactly) because we need the second income. Our trailer is twenty years old but it doesn't look it because we have replaced and repaired and painted nearly everything. It's a 16X70, which means we have a little over 1100 sq ft, three bedroom, one and a half bath, 8ft ceilings in every room but the living room and kitchen. We have two kids, so lots of toys and 'junk' that comes along with them . :) Sometimes I wish we had a bit more room, like we only have the closets in the bedrooms and that's it for storage (we have an Amish shed outside for the seasonal things and whatever else we need to "store" but I have also learned to make use out of every avaliable space like under the beds) but we've made it work. We're not on top of one another. There aren't little walkways through the rooms. And even with the 8' ceilings and ceiling fans that hang lower, nobody has hit their head on anything (DH is 5' 10" and I'm 5' 5", so we're not anywhere near hitting our heads...but DH's cousin is 6' something and they bought an older house with low archways and he's still able to walk through and skim right under them with no problems. He's not complainging) I often think the problem is that people think they need more "junk" than they really do to make a house a home. You really just need the basics. I will admit that the reason I wish I had more room was really just to have more cupboards and shelving and more space to display my Primitive antiques, not because we're lacking space to move around and properly function. Just look back at the houses from the previous generations. Some really tiny homes were big enough for families of 5, 6, 7....I know people that lived in smaller mobile homes than we're in and raised 4 or 5 kids! My grandparents first house was about the size of our trailer. It was a Cape Cod style so they had the slanted roof in the bedrooms upstairs....they had 5 kids in that house. It can be done! One tip will be to definitely measure spaces and the furniture you plan to fill it with. A lot of furniture today are these massive, overstuffed pieces that may not work so well in the smaller spaces. However, you will be able to find things that work! Enjoy your new home!

Hey, what is wrong with a Cheetos bag, especially from the perspective of a high schooler? LOL I think I would move the bed unit to the wall that the door is on. That way when you look into the room it isn't the first thing that you see, so that it overwhelms the space. Also, I think the wall it is on currently could be put to better use. Be sure you mount some kind of shelf up on the wall by the bed, so that he can put an alarm clock up there. You will want to mount a swing-arm lamp up on the wall so that he can read in bed and not have to get down to turn off lights. Have a comforter, not a bedspread, for ease of making the bed. This bedding from Penney's might be perfect: stan comforter I would get a drafting table or something along those lines, and put that in the corner where the windows all meet. That will give him great light for working on schoolwork and puzzles. Then the two seating pieces can be down that wall and into the opposite corner a bit near the closet door. Maybe a inexpensive small plastic or RTA table between the two seating pieces. I would do the orange as a stripe that runs around the room, as wide and at the same level as the space between the bottom of the bunk and the back support brace on the bed unit (about desk height. That should put it just above about 30 inches at the bottom, so just above chair rail height. Behind the desk in that area, instead of just an orange stripe, make it orange-painted corkboard or bulletin boards so that he has a place to hang stuff related to school and other reminders, a calendar, etc. I would look for other ways to bring in the orange, like painting the fam blades, a couple of throw pillows in a wild print that includes the blues and oranges, orange frames on artwork or photos. You could also consider adding orange stitching lines to your denim walls, done every so many inches to mimic the stitching on denim jeans. Oh, and I don't think a 14x14 room is small at all. Our younger son had a similar unit in his room when younger, and that space was 10.5x11 with 8 ft. ceilings. Didn't overwhelm that room at all. More room than two people have in the typical college dorm room, too. Looks like you have had fun and done a great job on the walls!

Congrats on the new home! My husband and I also purchased our first house recently (been in it about six months) and we're in a similar boat (though with our ratty college furniture instead of hand-me-downs), embarking on an adventure to cohesively decorate the place. While I do have good sense of how to decorate and am not worried about going about it, it would have been really difficult even for me to decorate immediately, so I'm not concerning myself with it (we also have a bunch of house projects in the way). Basically, a good strategy is to take your sweet time and not worry about stuff not matching/ suiting your tastes or the walls not being quite the right color right now. Hone your vision and slowly collect pieces that adhere to it, adding to your spacing or swapping something out. Also, simply live in your space for a while. Be by yourselves, have a friend over, have lots of friends over, host a fancy dinner party and also a casual barbecue. Observe how you and your friends interact with and move around in the space - this will handily inform what kind of seating you might need and how you want to arrange things. I'm always taking mental notes when people are over lol.